


Pinball Champ

by 3wisellamas



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff, M/M, Not actually written for Voxman Week but the timing was perfect so, Videos Game, Voxman Week 2020, Was this just an excuse for me to ramble about old arcade games? Yes, pinball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3wisellamas/pseuds/3wisellamas
Summary: Boxman and Venomous go to an arcade for date night, and get a little nostalgic for the past.
Relationships: Lord Boxman/Professor Venomous (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Pinball Champ

**Author's Note:**

> (Once again, I based parts of this off of a conversation from the Villains' Night Out server!)

More than once he’d had to explain to Fink that there were two different kinds of arcades: Some only had a bunch of videos game, old and new, appropriate for all ages, while some liked to mix the experience with a bar and older, more nostalgic games, a venue meant for adults only. And more than once, he’d had to deny her a visit to this specific arcade, as it was definitely the latter.

The cacophony of beeps and blips and quarters clacking into slots was a migraine in the making, the dim lights and bright neon signs over each cabinet and the people bustling to and fro was dizzying, the beer was...well, the beer wasn’t bad, he’d give them that at least. It was the second-biggest reason he’d even agreed to come to a place like this for date night, in fact, he mused as the biggest reason stepped back up to the table and slapped down two big handfuls of game tokens.

“Twenty technoes got us all that?!” Professor Venomous had brought more than enough cash to easily cover the games and the overpriced beer, but he still hadn’t expected so many!

A slight snarl slipped into Boxman’s voice, as he hurriedly drained his own glass. “Don’t get too excited yet, PV, I took a look at those machines on the way back. The good ones are all set up to take two or four of these per credit.” 

“Guess that’s how they getcha,” Venomous chuckled. “...Which ones are the good ones?”

“Oh, all of them, really!” Boxman blushed a little. “I guess I was mostly talking about those fancy 3D ones, but the older games are just as good, if not better!” Wistfully, he glanced at the establishment’s far corner, where a few ancient, dusty cabinets sat all but neglected by the other patrons. “In fact, I used to play some of these every single day, from the time my mommy dumped me at the arcade down the street to get me out of her face, until they closed for the night and kicked me out. Even taught myself how to program by recreating a few on my computer at home when I ran out of allowance money, and learned all the tricks to ‘em in the process!”

As his partner’s enthusiasm for these games rose, PV cut his pile of tokens in half, pushing some over to Boxman, who gleefully accepted.

“So, which one’s Fink’s favorite? I can probably show you a thing or two to pass on, if I haven’t got too rusty!”

“Oh, geez.” Venomous sighed, glancing around the arcade in a small panic, studying the rows of upright cabinets, a few shaped like big plastic cars and bikes off to one side, and a few pinball machines, which he anxiously averted his eyes from, before finally giving up. “I really wouldn’t know. Honestly, all these videos game just look like squares shooting at other squares to me.”

Boxman scoffed. “Just squares shooting at other squares?” He motioned to a nearby fighting game. “Even that one?”

“Well, I guess that one looks like a person.” He squinted. “Well...a jaguar-person. I don’t think I’ve seen Fink playing any with jaguar-people though." He looked at the almost-identical fighting game right next to it. "Or ice ninjas? Are those from the same game?"

Boxman just shrugged. "Well, I'll admit, those fighting games do get a little same-y. But, let me show you one of my favorites!"

Pulling the professor behind him, he made his way to one of those games in the abandoned corner, nestled between other extremely primitive, early ones. Gently, he slapped the side of the cabinet a couple times. “I bet even you know this one, PV!”

He looked up at the aged marquee, reading “Cosmic Intruders.” Of course, everyone knew Cosmic Intruders, even him! It was that classic game where you’re a square, shooting up at rows and rows of blocky alien “intruders,” and occasionally a UFO that flies across the screen, before they make it to the bottom and destroy the Earth. 

“I can’t say I’ve ever played it, though,” PV cautiously stated, hoping not to offend Boxman again. Instead, though, the cyborg simply reached into his pocket, and pressed two tokens into his husband’s purple palm.

“May as well give it a try!” With his encouragement, he slid the tokens into the slot, and stepped up to the controls as a few space-y sounds blared out of the speakers above him, and the intruders began their slow march downward.

There were only three buttons: One on the left labelled “Move Left,” one on the right labelled “Move Right,” and a big one in the middle labelled “FIRE.” Unsure, he pressed it, and sure enough, a tiny...green line? shot out of the abstract "spaceship" he was apparently controlling, where it hit the mark on one of the intruders on the bottom row. His confidence rising, he tried one of the movement buttons as well, but realized too late that the faint jagged lines coming from above were counterattacks -- his...object, exploded, and was immediately replaced with another.

“What do I do, Box?” Desperately, he tried to avoid the intruders’ shots, managing to get a few more lucky hits of his own in, even accidentally sneaking a shot up between rows to take out one of the upper enemies, to a faint chicken-clawed applause behind him. But, before he could do much else, he was blasted again, with his last unspecified laser-shooting thing appearing at the bottom of the screen.

“You know, if you need it, you can hide behind one of the shields, so they can’t get you!” Boxman pointed out one of the four big green boxes between Venomous and the intruders.

“Those are supposed to be shields?!” A shrill whine suddenly drifted out of the speakers as a tiny UFO inched across the top row, but as Venomous tried to aim for it he moved right into one of those jagged lines, ending his game for good. He’d barely even scored more than a hundred points. “Whoof…”

Boxman just smiled up at him. “You did better than I did my first time!”

“How old were you the first time you played this, Box?”

“Three and a half.” 

Well, PV was better than a three-and-a-half-year-old at the game, he supposed that had to count for something. He sighed, stepping back as Boxman threw another pair of tokens into the slot. “Now, do you wanna know the trick to this one?”

Figuring he didn't have much of a choice, PV settled in to watch as Boxman began playing. But, before he could get too comfortable, the cyborg caught his attention, excitedly jabbing a finger at the screen.

"There's two things you gotta notice before you can get good enough to clear your first screen, PV!" He gave a confident smirk. "First, you know how the intruders move down towards you? They only do that when they hit the side of the screen."

Ven's gaze followed as he pointed, and sure enough, the rows of intruders slowly crept towards the side, and bounced off, just a little bit lower. He'd been so focused on trying to survive his first game that he hadn't even noticed!

"And the second thing," Boxman fired at a handful of the things, far more than Ven had managed, pointing out how they seemed to speed up as the game went on. "As you destroy more and more of the intruders, there's less of them on the screen for the game to process, so it gets faster on you. So if you just fire blindly on 'em, soon enough they'll be too fast to hold off for long!"

Box let the game continue behind him as he turned to PV, that smug look on his face betraying no concern for the impending Game Over. "So, if you think about it, you're actually trying to beat the clock instead of the aliens. If they move down at a specific, measurable rate, you've only got so long before they reach the bottom, and if you just fire blindly that time limit gets shorter! So, the trick is to hit the right ones to give you _more_ time, instead of _less_."

Throwing two more tokens into the slot, he turned back to the game to demonstrate, letting an intrigued PV observe. Rather than take out a few random intruders along the bottom row, as he had done, Boxman instead moved to the far right of the screen, shooting the entire side column. 

"Now," he started, "they've gotta travel longer to hit the side and move down!" Boxman erased another side column, and another, eventually cleaning up the last of them as they still lingered along the top of the screen. Another intruder formation appeared, this one slightly faster than the first, but Boxman again just let the game run to its conclusion.

"I was _six_ and a half when I figured that one out!" He reached up to pat PV's arm encouragingly. "All you need's a little more experience. Are there any here you have played before?"

"Well…" His eyes drifted again to those lonely pinball machines, and again across the arcade floor, before finally stopping on another of the old games nearby. "Fink and I played a few rounds of this one while waiting to pick up a pizza once. I was pretty terrible at it, too, though." 

"Hm, K.C. Munch-Man?" Boxman stroked his chin a couple of times. "Think I sunk more time into that one than anything else in here. May I?"

"Please!" PV again watched contentedly as he started up the game, his little round character dashing through a maze gobbling dots, while deftly avoiding the four ghost-like monsters chasing after him.

"So what's the trick to this one, Box?" Ven asked as he finished clearing the first maze, without breaking so much as a sweat. 

But, rather than the same smug look in the cyborg's eye from before, Boxman instead stared ahead as he spoke, with a strange smile reflected in the screen, as if he was lost in a distant memory. "It's all about the ghosts on this one. They're all programmed with their own personalities, you see, even if they aren’t too complicated."

He ducked around a corner, barely avoiding the red ghost's charge. "The red one is really basic, he just chases you, not really using any strategy beyond that."

He rushed into the corner, towards a bigger, glowing dot, tricking the orange ghost guarding it into taking a wrong turn. "The orange one usually stays in this one spot, toying with you until your guard is down before charging!"

As he chased the weakened ghosts to eat them for extra points, Box frowned as he tried desperately to reach all four before his powerup ran out. "The blue one...most of the time he tries to get as far from you as possible, but he'll switch it up when you least expect it! Everyone kinda writes him off as simple, but there's a lot more to him than anyone gives him credit for."

The ghosts turned back to their usual colors, and Boxman raced for the next powerup. "And the purple one-" 

"Wait, purple one?" PV didn't see a purple ghost, only a pink one. A slip of the tongue perhaps, as he watched over Boxman's shoulder, and his cheek got a little too close to his partner's? The cyborg blushed, though, and struggled to explain.

"Well, the screen at my old arcade was busted, and it always looked purple to me. The blue one was a darker blue, too, that's why I used the colors I remembered best in their designs instead of the real ones..." He cleared his throat, pulling himself out of his memories and back on topic. "Anyways, the _pink_ one? That's the one who uses the most strategy, trying to figure out where you're going in order to ambush you!"

He cleared another maze, before handing off the controls to a still-reluctant PV, who even armed with all this new knowledge about his ghostly adversaries still lost all his lives in record time.

Groaning, he leaned against the machine. "Cob, guess I'll never be any good at videos game, no matter how many of these tricks you show me…" 

"Oh come on, it's not about how good you get at them!" Boxman attempted to pass him another pair of tokens, which PV refused to accept. "We came here to have fun, not to show off how good we are or how many points we can get!"

"Still," he sighed, "you're trying to teach me how to play, and I'm just...I don't think it's working. These just aren't my thing. I'm sorry, Box."

Boxman ignored the apology. "Well, what is your thing?"

"Huh?"

"There's gotta be a game in here that you like, that's fun for you! Or even one you haven't played before, that just looks fun to try out!"

"Well…" Venomous hissed a little to himself. "I guess there is...one thing in here I like."

"Please don't say the beer."

"Two things."

"Or me."

"Three." He glanced over to the pinball tables one more time, finally swallowing that lump that had been caught in his throat since they'd entered, and he’d first caught sight of the things. "I don't like videos game, but I do like pinball."

"Wait, really?"

Venomous didn't answer, considering a few more glasses of that expensive beer before the inevitable, but before he could call over to the bartender Boxman dashed right out from under him, to the nearest pinball table.

"You know, I never really played much pinball, since I was so into videos game. You might be better at this than me!" 

_Oh Boxy,_ Venomous thought to himself as he silently watched him put a few tokens into the slot and pull back the spring to launch his first ball, _you have absolutely no idea_. The table was indeed one he was familiar with, having played one just like it a long time ago, but clearly it wasn't like the concrete logic-ruled games Boxman was so good at -- his ball bounced around the board a few times, the whims of physics randomly throwing it into a few small targets, before it dropped right down past the flippers before he could react.

"Whoops…" Second try, this time the cyborg was careful to keep his eye on the ball as it bounced around, madly activating both flippers to try and keep it in play whenever it came close. To his credit, he actually managed to go for a couple of minutes this way, before the ball hit the wrong spot and tumbled right into the gutter, out of the flippers' reach. 

And ball number 3? He lost it almost immediately, as someone at one of the fighting games behind him whooped in victory, causing him to turn his head for only a second to see what the commotion was. But a second was all he needed, and the ball slipped past him down the drain, ending his game with a grand total of 2,260 points.

Rather than being dismayed by his rather pathetic attempt, Boxman just shrugged, smiling up at Venomous. "Oh, well, I tried! You got any tricks you could show me on this one?"

"Well, I might…" Behind Boxman, the screen on the pinball table began cycling through the previous high scores. When he saw the one on top come up, though, he almost had a heart attack: LZR, 49,528,110 points.

This couldn't be the same pinball table. No way. And didn't they lose their scores when they got unplugged, anyway?

Boxman followed his eyes, just barely catching that high score as it advanced to the second highest, with a full 10 million points less. "Someone you recognize? I bet for a score like that they saved a backup, so it wouldn't get erased!"

"No," Venomous assured himself more than he assured Boxman, "It couldn't be anyone I'd recognize. They're long gone by now." A score backup? Nuts. He stared down the machine, as if to melt it with his gaze like that high scorer would have done. Like _he_ would have done. But, without his old helmet, there was only one way to finally get that score off the board, once and for all…

Venomous pulled a pair of tokens out of his pocket, and started it up.

His first ball bounced around the targets at the top, before he gently caught it in his right flipper, holding it there as he scanned the board, memories flooding back. There was a lane to the left, a long wire chute with an opening just big enough for the pinball, and he aimed for it, scoring a direct hit! The ball made its way down the chute, dropping into a pit at its end, and Venomous launched a second one, repeating the process. Before he launched his third ball, though, Boxman tugged on his sleeve.

"What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to make it, you know, bounce around and stuff?"

He winked down at him. "You see, Box, the trick to pinball is to find a sweet spot, get to where you can hit it every single time, and _do that._ " With a sinister grin, Venomous trapped his third ball in the same manner, and an alarm bell sounded from somewhere in the machine -- the words "Multi-Ball" flashed on the screen, and all three balls rolled out onto the board at once! Rusty as he was, Venomous still didn't have much trouble keeping track of all three, keeping his eyes glued to the flippers and ensuring that he hit all of them towards spots where they'd linger for a while, scoring extra points without too much extra effort on his part. Behind him Boxman’s attention was locked onto the screen as his score soared, with a few more arcade patrons turning their heads to see just what was going on. 

It took him an impressive amount of time to lose his extra pinballs, but he aimed for that chute again, and again, ensuring he could keep them coming. His score climbed higher and higher.

29,000,000.

39,000,000.

49,000,000!

 _Just a little more…_ One of his multi-balls clattered down the drain, but Venomous took advantage to shoot his other two with a little more precision, aiming for whatever targets he could. 500,000 more points wasn't even a challenge, and as he surpassed 49,528,000 he released the flippers, letting both balls hit whatever they wished on their way down. He'd beaten the high score, with two more balls left.

Rather than keep playing, though, he stepped aside, nodding to Boxman. "I'm thinking about grabbing another beer. Why don't you try again, while I'm gone?"

The cyborg was speechless, slowly taking up the controls again as Venomous passed him on the way back to the bar. And by the time he returned, Boxman had already lost his remaining pinballs, though he'd added quite a few more points to the total, to PV's approval.

He passed Boxman another beer as well while the high scores flashed onto the screen again, with the new one at the top: VOX, 49,601,750. Venomous couldn't help but chuckle at the name he'd entered.

"Hey, we beat it together, didn't we?" Boxman took a long sip, and nudged his husband's arm as the old high score from LZR came up. "You just had to top yourself, didn't you Laser?" 

He just groaned, leaning against the thing with his forehead in his free hand. "I was hoping you wouldn't put two and two together on that."

"Well, you didn't exactly make it hard..." 

PV sighed, defeated. "This is the same machine we used to have in the rec room at POINT HQ, when I was still there." He motioned to the rest of the high scores, containing entries from GRY, LZR, LZR, ROO, FOX, and LZR again. "I guess that’s why they saved the scores on it. We actually held a few tournaments when things got slow, but since I always ended up being the champ we stopped, and then they added a Fight Fighters game right next to it so that I wasn't the only one having any fun anymore."

Boxman looked up at him, concerned. "Is that why you don't like videos game?"

"No, it's...unrelated. I had weak thumbs when I was a kid." He drained his glass, blushing. "Anyways, I think I saw Fight Fighters here, are you any good at that one?"

Boxman just set his drink aside, and cracked his knuckles. "Please, where do you think I got half my robots' fighting moves from? But, that one's really no fun without a second player…"

"Oh no." 

Venomous didn't fight him, though, as Boxman led his Player 2 by the hand towards the game. "Don't worry, though, I'll try to go easy on you, 'Weak Thumbs!'"  
  
  



End file.
